William made some good points in his blog. There's not much that the SBC president is going to be able to do about the baptism numbers in the SBC. You would think, though, that in a time when declines in attendance and membership, and in baptisms, are considered to be in crisis mode in the denomination, a pastor of a church that seems to be bucking those trends would be seen as an inspiration, if nothing else.

It seems that the ugliness of theological controversy is going to keep the stated priorities of Southern Baptists, those things being evangelism and missions, from ever actually being a priority over the pull of the influence of who gets to call the shots in the denomination.

Interesting blog post William! If Greer is a Calvinist, he doesn't sound all that Calvinist with this statement.

For the record, I believe Jesus died for all people, that every person can and should be called to repent and believe, and that you haven’t fully preached the gospel if you haven’t called for that response. #GospelAboveAll

As to your assertion about "functional universalism" I'd argue that you've named the soteriology of the majority of Protestant Christians, even if they won't admit it.

Another thing that is afflicting the SBC is that the best evangelism and high baptism rates among Baptists came in conjunction with times of high birth rates among Baptists. At the present time, if the statistics for white protestants hold true for Baptists, we are not having enough children to keep our ranks up. Unless Baptists return to real personal evangelism outside our religious ghettos, I see the same trend affecting both the SBC and CBF. Growth will not come from Mohler's "full quiver" theology.

"God will never be less than He is and does not need to be more" (John Koessler)

Dave Roberts wrote:Another thing that is afflicting the SBC is that the best evangelism and high baptism rates among Baptists came in conjunction with times of high birth rates among Baptists. At the present time, if the statistics for white protestants hold true for Baptists, we are not having enough children to keep our ranks up. Unless Baptists return to real personal evangelism outside our religious ghettos, I see the same trend affecting both the SBC and CBF. Growth will not come from Mohler's "full quiver" theology.

While people want to blame liberalism/conservativism, secularism, etc. a report I read about the UMC contended that birthrate was our main culprit too for lower membership rates lower baptism rates, etc.

I'm in a farming community where at one time people would have often had 3,4 or more children each and now we have a lot of 1 or 2 children families. You can have the same number of adults you had years ago and a children's Sunday School program that is 1/2 or less of what it was.

I realize that many only want to consider new converts outside the church as evangelism. But, when your own internal base is shrinking, it takes a lot more new converts to grow a church than it used to.

Even though baptisms and missions support are the constant themes of denominational political campaigns in the SBC, if resolving the problems associated with both of those had anything to do with who got elected President, or could be fixed by a denominational emphasis, then the slogan "a million more" wouldn't just be for '54, and the big issue would be figuring out what to do with the excess giving to the CP.

I'm sorry to hear that denominational political conflict is creeping back into the SBC. Southern Baptists haven't ever been really good at accepting diversity, or allowing for differences of opinion over theology and interpreting the Bible. Maybe that's a bit of an inferiority complex that developed when the South lost the Civil War, or something like that. If this is generational, then the younger generation needs to learn a bit about putting commitment to mission and purpose above personal career advancement opportunities. Four years as head of a mission sending agency isn't enough to bring about the kind of consistency and stability it needs to succeed, and denominational ministry is no place to work if your interest is personal career advancement and you're ready to move on when a better opportunity comes along, or you intend to use your position as a platform for launching a personal writing or speaking "ministry". I would bet that a lot of those cultural issues are behind some of the conflict, anyway.

William Thornton wrote:Looks like some ugliness is in our future. This is the most negative campaign since the last of the CR elections. Calvinism is a convenient foil for most of the rancor. A lot is generational.

Interesting blog post, William. As a lowly layman in the pews, I'm largely unaware of these "campaigns" and "politicking" unless I run across such a post. I imagine most lay folks are largely unaware that any such "campaigns" exist or how the denominational politics work.

My brother is an SBC pastor and will probably be at the convention, but we haven't talked much about it lately. Back around Christmas he thought Robert Jeffress was a shoe-in for SBC Prez since the convention is in Texas and would have a higher participation by Texas churches, but recently he seemed to think that may no longer be the case.

Sandy wrote:Even though baptisms and missions support are the constant themes of denominational political campaigns in the SBC, if resolving the problems associated with both of those had anything to do with who got elected President, or could be fixed by a denominational emphasis, then the slogan "a million more" wouldn't just be for '54, and the big issue would be figuring out what to do with the excess giving to the CP.

I have to confess I've never gotten why there was a move towards Calvinism by some SBCers. In the dark ages when I was still in the SBC there were very few ardent Calvinists. The denomination did fine for decades with a loose modified Calvinism ( keeping things like security of the believer) without getting hard nosed about it.

I've just never understood the attraction or what the current Calvinists think they are getting out of it. If someone could prove that all this was predestined, I'd go play golf on Sunday and save my breath. (Knowing that I was predestine to play golf that Sunday anyway..... )

Tim Bonney wrote:I've just never understood the attraction or what the current Calvinists think they are getting out of it. If someone could prove that all this was predestined, I'd go play golf on Sunday and save my breath. (Knowing that I was predestine to play golf that Sunday anyway..... )

And then you'd spend all eternity wondering if it was the wrath of God's predestining zeal or your own stupid golf addiction that ended you up in the Lake of Fire...

ET wrote:Interesting blog post, William. As a lowly layman in the pews, I'm largely unaware of these "campaigns" and "politicking" unless I run across such a post. I imagine most lay folks are largely unaware that any such "campaigns" exist or how the denominational politics work.

Even in the days when 40,000 registered and showed up mainly for the presidential vote, you wouldn't find messengers at the convention from more than 10% of the churches. Registration numbers being what they are these days, you might be hard pressed to find 10,000 out of the 55,000 or so congregations that belong to the SBC who have bothered to send a single messenger in a decade.

Timothy Bonney wrote:I've just never understood the attraction or what the current Calvinists think they are getting out of it. If someone could prove that all this was predestined, I'd go play golf on Sunday and save my breath. (Knowing that I was predestine to play golf that Sunday anyway..... )

If I were predestined to play golf, I'd have to be Catholic, because that would be purgatory.